Medical research has demonstrated the importance of maintaining adequate hydration to maintain a person's physical and mental health. Serious consequences can occur due to the lack of proper hydration. These consequences can range in severity from fatigue and nausea to loss of consciousness and even death. To maintain optimum health, physicians generally recommend that under normal conditions individuals drink at least eight 8-ounce (240 ml) glasses of water a day (for a total of a gallon of water per day). When an individual is under physical exertion, exposed to extreme environmental conditions, and/or over weight, the amount of fluids that the individual needs to consume generally increases because the individual's rate of fluid loss increases under such circumstances. Thus, regardless of whether a person is exercising, working, or simply resting, maintaining proper hydration and peak performance (both physical and mental) requires the regular ingestion of fluids, which in turn requires the availability of fluids to ingest.
Various portable devices have been developed to help address the availability problem. These devices have included, for example, aluminum canteens and plastic water bottles. While these devices are reasonably light, durable, and inexpensive, they do not allow hands-free fluid consumption, which may be desirable or even extremely important in some applications. In addition, they are often awkwardly mounted to a waist belt or in a pocket of a backpack, making the process of accessing them during certain activities impractical and even unsafe. As a result, individuals using these types of portable devices often go without fluids longer than they should. Frequently, this is because the user has to wait for a suitable break in their activity before safely reaching for the water bottle or canteen. Because of the inconvenience and/or safety issues, individuals using these types of devices also often wait until they feel thirsty before finding a suitable break in whatever activity they are engaged to have a drink. The problem with this approach, however, is that by the time a person is thirsty, they are already dehydrated and thus their body is no longer capable of optimal performance. In addition, if an individual waits too long to properly hydrate, their body can begin to cramp, causing pain and a further reduction in the individual's ability to engage in physical activity. Moreover, a person does not immediately recover from dehydration by drinking water. This is because the cells of the human body begin to shut down once the human body becomes dehydrated, and it is only through a slow process of re-hydration that the cells of the body can recover and begin to function properly again.
More recently, personal hydration systems have been developed that offer a number of advantages over water bottles and canteens, including improved fluid delivery capabilities and convenience. These systems frequently include either a semi-rigid or flexible bag-like fluid reservoir that may be carried in a pack on the user's back or waist. These systems permit a user to drink more frequently while engaged in a variety of sporting, recreational, and work-related activities because a long flexible drink tube is connected to the reservoir through an exit port at one end and terminates in a mouthpiece with a bite valve at the other end. The tube is long enough to allow the mouthpiece to be carried in the user's mouth to enable the user to draw water from the reservoir at will. Examples of personal hydration systems of this type and mouthpieces therefor are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,727,714, 5,060,833, 5,085,349, 6,070,767, and 7,490,740.
Another shortcoming in these conventional systems is that the drink tube is left dangling. As a result, when the user releases the mouthpiece located on the terminal end of the of the drink tube from the user's mouth, the tube will fall away from the user's mouth and require the user to retrieve the drink tube and put the mouthpiece back in his or her mouth the next time another drink is desired. It may not be practical (or even safe) for a user to manipulate the drink tube in this manner during certain activities, for example, when the user is traveling at a high rate of speed, such as on bicycle, in a race car, or on a motorcycle. Yet, it is also not always practical, or even desirable, for the user to keep the mouthpiece in his or her mouth at all times.
Headgear has been developed to facilitate hands-free hydration. The headgear is designed to permit the bite-valve of the drink tube to be adjustably located in front of the user's mouth. This type of headgear is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,283,344 to Bradley.